Goldy

Now that Forward Seattle’s anti-$15 minimum wage referendum has failed*, it is useful to explore the reasons why, especially with some of its business supporters now alleging foul play and/or incompetence on the part of City Attorney Pete Holmes as a major contributing factor. Oh please.

The argument goes that Holmes’ 13th hour revelation that voter proposed charter amendments could not go to the ballot in even-numbered years, unexpectedly set back Forward Seattle’s efforts, leaving them with little time to complete a successful signature drive. But that’s just plain silly. While it is true that the confusion cost them a few days of signature gathering, the charter amendment they had originally filed would have required almost twice as many signatures to qualify for the ballot. If they couldn’t collect 16,510 signatures in four weeks, they were never going to be able to collect 30,956 in five. Never.

Either way, Forward Seattle started gathering signatures too late. Had they followed $15 Now’s lead, and started gathering signatures on a futile charter amendment a month earlier, they might have a legitimate complaint (though more with their own attorneys than with the city’s). But they didn’t. They clearly underestimated the time, effort, and money it would take to buy the signatures necessary to qualify for the ballot. And that’s totally on them.

Which raises the question: Why was it so difficult for Forward Seattle to collect the requisite signatures? Other campaigns have gathered far more signatures in even less time. Why couldn’t Forward Seattle?

Part of the credit (or blame) must go to labor-backed Working Washington for running a somewhat effective “decline to sign” campaign. Working Washington did a great job of publicizing the lies Forward Seattle’s signature gatherers were telling. But why was it necessary for Forward Seattle to sell its referendum with lies?

Because it lacked public enthusiasm and support.

Had Forward Seattle truly enjoyed broad support within the small business community it claimed to represent, let alone with voters, it would have had an invaluable advantage. Imagine hundreds of small business owners stocking petitions at their checkout counters, their own employees personally asking their tens of thousands of loyal customers for their support. They could have collected twice as many signatures in half the time at a fraction of the cost.

But they didn’t pursue this populist approach, because they rightly understood that such a public display of opposition to $15 at their place of business would have alienated customers and destroyed employee morale. So instead they went the mercenary route, hiring the same shady signature gathering firm that Tim Eyman uses to qualify his mercenary initiatives for the ballot.

Forward Seattle’s backers lacked the confidence to go directly to their customers for the same reason their paid signature gatherers resorted to lies: the referendum wasn’t popular. And that is the primary reason why Forward Seattle failed.

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* Over at PubliCola Josh cautions that the signature verification process isn’t final and that some of those set aside could still be validated, and all that is true. But it makes no difference. The gap is simply too big. Even if you were to add in all of the signatures from the other referendum, and subtract none of the several hundred signature withdrawal requests, and validate 100 percent of the remaining signatures, and rehabilitate 100 percent of the “signature miscompares,” Forward Seattle would still fall short. Some signatures just can’t be cured: A blank signature line will always be blank. An out of district voter will still be registered out of district. Forward Seattle has failed.

With 15,004 of their 18,928 signatures processed, but only 11,412 signatures validated, there are now fewer signatures remaining on Forward Seattle’s petitions than would be needed to reach the 16,510 signature threshold required to qualify their anti-$15 minimum wage referendum for the ballot. So, yeah, as I wrote yesterday, stick a fork in it.

Again, the petitions are holding steady at about a 76 percent validation. Even under the best possible circumstances, Forward Seattle would need a validation rate better than 118 percent on the remaining signatures in order to qualify for the ballot. Which is, of course, mathematically impossible.

It should be noted that a 76 percent validation rate is not unusual per se, but is certainly at the low range of normal. But maybe if you are willing to tolerate such sloppy and/or dishonest tactics on the part of your paid signature gatherers, you should expect sloppy and/or dishonest work in return. I sure hope for their sake that Forward Seattle’s contract with the notorious Citizen Solutions includes a refund for invalid signatures, considering they were reportedly paying as much as $4 a pop.

Speaking of which, as late as last week, Flying Apron Bakery co-owner Angela Cough loaned Forward Seattle $15,000, presumably to cover the expense of the last batch of signatures. Talk about throwing good money after bad.

Of course, as incompetent as all the smart, successful business owners behind Forward Seattle were at running their referendum, a lot of the credit for their failure must go to labor-backed Working Washington, which ran an effective “decline to sign” campaign that certainly made signature gathering more difficult, as well as a novel signature withdrawal campaign that added some last minute insurance. Kudos.

Hey, let’s not jump to conclusions—it could have been an angry Seattle Metropolitan Parks District supporter:

An anonymous individual (or individuals) left a target riddled with bullet holes on the doorstep of the Seattle-King County League Women Voters‘ Capitol Hill office over the recent holiday weekend—a message, the LWV believes, about the state chapter’s support for I-594, which would require background checks for gun sales online and at gun shows. A volunteer for the group found the target over the weekend.

… In a statement, Seattle/King County LWV president Ellen Barton said, “This apparent attempt to intimidate us will not dissuade us from our work. The League of Women Voters will continue to be a forum for dialogue, research and education on gun laws and gun violence, and we look forward to reasonable, robust dialogue in the months ahead.”

Couple of thoughts. First, if you want to persuade voters here that we don’t need mandatory background checks on all gun sales, threatening to shoot them isn’t the best way to do it.

Second, my God, what a crappy shot! I mean, look at that target—it’s all over the place! I shot better targets than that when I was 12 years old. If you’re gonna threaten a bunch of old ladies, the least you could do is use a target from somebody who actually knows how to shoot.

If anything, you’re just encouraging us to come for your guns, now that we know you couldn’t hit the side of a barn. Just sayin’.

The Seattle Times editorial board is attempting to use the endorsement season to send a message to legislators on education. And that message is clear: “We hate teachers!”

5th LD House: Incumbent Rep. Chad Magendanz (R)
Magendanz’s campaign focuses on ways for the state to fulfill the state Supreme Court’s McCleary education-funding order… He is a clear choice over his two Democratic opponents, education activist David Spring and Colin Alexander, who lack Magendanz’s experience.

 

31st LD Senate: Cathy Dahlquist (R) over incumbent Senator Pam Roach (R)
Roach says she voted against a critically important teacher-evaluation bill this year because she was angered by her leadership’s push for the Dream Act. She refused in an editorial board meeting to say whether she supports the Washington Education Association’s costly Initiative 1351, which would require the hiring of thousands of additional teachers, even in upper grades where benefits of lower class size are unclear. Dahlquist takes the responsible position on these issues: yes for reform, no on the WEA’s unfunded mandate.

 

31st LD House: Drew Stokesbary (R) over Mike Sando (D)
Stokesbary’s consistent positions offer a contrast with Democrat Mike Sando, who appears conflicted. A schoolteacher and a member of the Enumclaw City Council, Sando draws inspiration and financial support from the Legislature’s moderate-Democrat faction. Yet as a local teachers’ union president, he supports the Washington Education Association’s budget-busting Initiative 1351, and he cannot suggest where to find the necessary billions. In contrast, Stokesbary deplores the measure and embraces education-reform measures.

 

33rd LD Senate: Incumbent Senator Karen Keiser (D)
In 2012, [Keiser] supported a bill that would have streamlined health-insurance offerings for teachers and might have saved them money — despite opposition from the Washington Education Association, which benefits from the current system. … While Keiser disappointingly opposed including student test scores in teacher evaluations , neither challenger has the civic résumé or the knowledge required to take on a lawmaker of her stature.

 

33rd LD House: Incumbent Rep. Mia Gregerson (D)
For instance, she told The Times’ editorial board she would have voted for a controversial bill mandating the use of test scores in teacher evaluations — if Democratic-party leaders had allowed it to come to the floor of the House — despite opposition from the state teachers’ union.

 

37th LD House: Daniel Bretzke (R) over incumbent Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos (D)
While Santos should be focused on the Legislature meeting its court-mandated obligations to fully fund education, she wants to make the challenge worse. She supports Initiative 1351, the teachers union-backed measure that requires class sizes across all grades to be reduced, the hiring of thousands more teachers and building of more classrooms. Yet, there is no funding mechanism in sight.

 

37th LD Senate: Pramila Jayapal (D)
Jayapal should strive for independence on issues that might not always appease the many liberal and labor groups that have endorsed her, including Fuse Washington, four separate SEIU unions and the Washington Education Association. On education, she must remember the Legislature’s top priority is to fix a broken system, not to prop up unfunded mandates.

 

1st LD House: Edward Barton (R) over incumbent Rep. Luis Moscoso (D)
On the critical issue of education, Barton is rightly skeptical of the state Supreme Court’s heavy-handed education-funding mandate, but advocates for additional funding through the so-called levy swap proposal, which has been advanced by some key House Democrats. But his independence contrasts with Moscoso, a two-term Democrat, who indicated he defers to House Democratic leadership on key education funding — the most fundamental issue facing the Legislature. Every elected official needs to be en pointe.

 

32nd LD Senate: Chris Eggen (D) over incumbent Senator Maralyn Chase (D)
[Eggen] is skeptical of the expense and mechanics of Initiative 1351, which would reduce classroom size with no revenue attached. He also understands the need for a workable role for student test scores in teacher evaluations and eligibility for federal funding.

And no, I’m not cherry-picking. Those are all nine legislative endorsements published so far, and the only one that doesn’t implicitly attack teachers, their union, and their interests is the Magendanz endorsement. But in case you’re wondering, yes, Magendanz opposes the WEA-backed class-size reducing I-1351, which is the litmus test of all litmus tests for the Seattle Times: “This seems like it is serving the adults in our education system,” said Magendanz on TVW. And by “adults,” he means “teachers.”

It is also worth noting that the editors have urged voters to toss out three of the five Democratic incumbents as punishment for supporting teachers—endorsing one Democratic and two Republican challengers. The only Republican incumbent they haven’t endorsed is bat-shit-crazy Senator Pam Roach—who refused to state a position on I-1351—and they endorsed another Republican in her stead.

So yes, legislative hopefuls, that was the editorial board’s secret phrase: “No on I-1351.” Congratulations to those of you who passed the test.

Just got the latest signature verification numbers on Forward Seattle’s referendum, and it doesn’t look good for the anti-$15 minimum wage crowd:

Referendum No. 2 (Forward Seattle)

Number of signatures submitted	18,928
Number of signatures reviewed	8,389
Number of signatures verified	6,409

With about 44 percent of the signatures verified, that’s a validation rate of just 76.4 percent, far short of what’s necessary to produce the 16,510 valid signatures needed to qualify for the ballot. The first batch of 3,353 signatures validated at 75.5 percent rate, so at first glance the validation rate appears to be trending slightly in Forward Seattle’s favor. But some of this improvement is due to a small number of “signature miscompares” being rehabilitated under review from supervisors, and then folded back into the total, so it’s not really possible to entirely compare validation rates from one batch to another.

And in case you think there’s something fishy about such a low validation rate, think again:

As you can see, the bulk of the rejected signatures are from people who are either not registered to vote, or are registered outside of Seattle. There’s nothing subjective about that. Meanwhile, since the number of duplicate signatures tends to rise exponentially as the sample size increases (for obvious reasons), that number should jump to close to 200 by the time the process is completed.

Given just the numbers above, Forward Seattle would need an impossible 95.8 percent validation rate on the remaining signatures in order to qualify for the ballot. Not gonna happen. But there are also an additional 455 verified signatures out of 567 submitted from a second referendum drive. If these are added to the total (and it’s not clear that they legally can), Forward Seattle would still need a 91.5 percent validation rate on the remaining signatures. Again, not gonna happen. And that’s not even counting the “hundreds” of signature withdrawal affidavits Working Washington collected.

So stick a fork in it, this referendum is done! And it’s not even close: Forward Seattle will fall a couple thousand signatures short of the threshold. There will not be a $15 minimum wage referendum on the November ballot.

 

The Seattle Times has endorsed Republican Edward Barton over two-term Democratic state Representative Luis Moscoso in the 1st Legislative District, and omigod, I don’t even know where to start with this one.

First of all, this is now the second race (that I am aware of) in which the editors have endorsed making the state legislature even whiter. As if that’s possible. By my count there are currently only ten nonwhite members of the 147-member legislature (none in the Republican caucuses, unless we want to go back to counting the Irish).

Moscoso is one of only two Hispanics currently serving in Olympia, while Representative Sharon Tomiko Santos is one of only four Asian Pacific Islanders. The Seattle Times would prefer to replace both of them with middle-aged white guys.

Second, the editors’ pre-House biographical description of Moscoso as simply “a former Community Transit bus driver,” is an absolutely stunning lie omission, even for an editorial board that has raised lies of omission to the highest form of art.

Yes, Moscoso drove a bus. But more significantly he was a union organizer and four-term president of ATU Local 1576. He was the Government Relations Director for the Washington Public Employees Association, and served three terms as Secretary of the Washington State Democratic Party. Moscoso has also served on numerous other boards and committees including the Puget Sound Regional Council and NAACP of Snohomish County, but it is his union organizing and Democratic Party activism that makes up the bulk of his professional resume. And it is also the biographical detail to which the anti-labor editors truly object.

And last, but certainly not least, I have to admit I had trouble falling asleep last night after reading this favorable description of Barton’s education policy:

On the critical issue of education, Barton is rightly skeptical of the state Supreme Court’s heavy-handed education-funding mandate, but advocates for additional funding through the so-called levy swap proposal, which has been advanced by some key House Democrats.

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

How many times do I have to explain that the “levy swap” provides no additional funding for education?! It just doesn’t! I’ve laid out in detail how a levy swap would would work. I’ve shown my math. It is an accounting trick, pure and simple, to preposterously claim that a levy swap provides “additional funding” to K-12 education.

To repeat, a levy swap is by design revenue neutral. It merely replaces local levy dollars with state levy dollars—any increase in state school spending is offset by decreasing aggregate local school spending by an equivalent amount. Furthermore, in “property rich” urban and suburban districts like Seattle, Bellevue, and Redmond (communities whose interests the Seattle Times allegedly serves), a levy swap would substantially raise our property taxes while providing zero additional funds for our local schools. In fact, a levy swap would actually erode our local K-12 funding over time!

I know folks at the Seattle Times read me—I can see the traffic coming in from nwsource.com.  So there is absolutely no excuse for continuing to perpetuate this lie.

Reading between the lines of the paper’s endorsements this year, the editors have clearly made education reform their overriding priority… if by “reform” you mean busting the teachers union, promoting the Gates/Walmart-backed corporate education agenda, and defying the Supreme Court’s mandate to spend more tax dollars on public schools. I suppose that’s their right. I just wish they had the integrity to be honest about it.

Good on the Seattle Times editorial board for voicing support for US Senator Patty Murray’s efforts to protect reproductive health care from the Supreme Court’s dangerous Hobby Lobby ruling…

Republicans and other Democrats in the Senate and House need to step up to this legislation, and its basic protections. Does anyone really believe that employees surrender their religious beliefs and civic prerogatives to their employers?

Shuffle the demographics, ethnicities and roles a bit, and no doubt the GOP opponents would be outraged by some potential employer-employee scenarios.

Timely and appropriate legislation in Congress restates the history and intent of existing federal laws so it will be clear, even for the nation’s highest court.

Of course, Murray’s bill has no chance of passing the Republican-controlled House. So, you know, if they really cared about defending women’s access to reproductive care, perhaps the editors might want to stop endorsing so many goddamn Republicans for Congress? Just sayin’.

1 Corinthians 6:1-4
If any of you has a dispute with another, do you dare to take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the Lord’s people? Or do you not know that the Lord’s people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, do you ask for a ruling from those whose way of life is scorned in the church?

Discuss.

I’ve yet to see the exact numbers, and they don’t appear to be available online, but word is that King County Elections has reviewed about 4,000 of the approximately 19,500 signatures Forward Seattle submitted on their anti-$15 minimum wage petitions, and validated only 75 percent on the first pass. That’s far short of the 84.6 percent rate necessary to produce the 16,500 valid signatures required to qualify a referendum for the ballot.

I’ve no idea if those first 4,000 signatures were a random sample or a contiguous batch of petition sheets, but either way it’s bad news for Forward Seattle, which would now need an 87.1 percent validation rate on the remaining signatures to meet the threshold. That’s not impossible; all of the rates posted above are within the range of past experience. But 87.1 percent would be more of an optimistic outlier than the norm.

And that’s before considering the “hundreds” of signature withdrawals Working Washington tells me they collected.

Considering the lengths Forward Seattle had to go to generate signatures—you know, lying to voters about their petition—a 75 percent validation rate would not be surprising. It takes low standards to run a signature drive this way, and those low standards almost guarantee a degree of sloppiness and cheating.

In other words, you get what you pay for. A maxim the business owners funding Forward Seattle might want to take to heart in reconsidering how they compensate their own low wage workers.

Goldy, January 29, 2010:

[C]ategorizing Freeman’s market philosophy as somewhere to the right of Rich Uncle Pennybags, well, that’s about as speculative as predicting a Seattle Times editorial endorsement. (November, 2012: “Rob McKenna for Governor; a different kind of Republican.” You mark my words.)

The Seattle Times, October 6, 2012:

Rob McKenna is the best candidate to replace Chris Gregoire as governor of Washington. … McKenna has an independent mind. He is willing to work with Democrats and he is willing on occasion to buck his party.

I don’t lay claim to any peculiar powers of prescience. This is just who they are and what they do.

Hate to make HA all Seattle Times-bashing all the time,* but over at PubliCola, Josh deftly highlights how blatantly dishonest the editorial board’s Parks District “No” endorsement is, by dredging up the paper’s “No” endorsements against the previous two parks levies:

Isn’t it weird that … the Seattle Times editorialized this week that voters should reject this year’s permanent parks funding measure because they’d prefer Seattle’s traditional levy renewal funding approach, yet they came out against the last two levy proposals?

(No inconsistency, I guess, but to mangle an old phrase: They were against parks funding before they were against it.)

How can anybody take the Blethenites seriously?

* No I don’t.

Back in 2012, just for kicks, I got myself elected a Rick Santorum delegate from the 37th Legislative District Republican precinct caucus. How’d I manage that? I was the only “Republican” to show up from my precinct. That’s how much of a joke the GOP is in this overwhelmingly Democratic district.

Yet that didn’t stop the Seattle Times editorial board from hopelessly endorsing an unknown Republican against 8-term incumbent Democratic state Representative Sharon Tomiko Santos. I mean, what the fuck?

THE 37th Legislative District’s Position 1 needs a legislator willing to compromise and represent the best interests of a diverse district where many schools are struggling and persistent achievement gaps threaten to leave students behind.

That means turning out the incumbent in favor of the promising political newcomer, Daniel Bretzke of Seattle. The moderate Republican faces an uphill battle against a 16-year legislative veteran, state Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, D-Seattle.

If by “uphill battle” they mean running face-first into the base of a sheer vertical cliff, sure.

See, here’s how this thing usually works. The Seattle Times will hold its nose and endorse a Democrat in an uber-Democratic district, because to do otherwise would make them look feckless, impotent, and stoopid. If there’s a competitive race for an open seat, they’ll generally go with the Democrat with the fewest labor endorsements, but otherwise it’s the incumbent. That way the editors can point to their handful of Democratic endorsements in safe Democratic districts as a defense against accusations of partisanship arising from, say, their endorsement of lifelong asshole Drew Stokesbary over his more qualified Democratic opponent in a swingish 31st Legislative District.

So what explains this astounding act of editorial futility?

The Democrat chairs the House Education Committee and is in a position to make a huge difference for kids. Yet, she has repeatedly used her power to stall meaningful education reforms opposed by the teachers union.

While Santos should be focused on the Legislature meeting its court-mandated obligations to fully fund education, she wants to make the challenge worse. She supports Initiative 1351, the teachers union-backed measure that requires class sizes across all grades to be reduced, the hiring of thousands more teachers and building of more classrooms. Yet, there is no funding mechanism in sight.

This past session, Santos ignored Seattle Schools’ plea for a change in the law to include some level of student test scores in teacher evaluations.

I’ve got my own problems with Santos, dating back to her stalwart defense of payday lenders. She refused to support last year’s minimum wage legislation, and she’s long scorned much of the environmental agenda as something that’s more of a concern for rich white people than her own diverse working-class district. She’s actually far less liberal than her district. But I appreciate her work as chair of the Education Committee where she’s been a strong opponent of charter schools and much of the rest of the Gates/Walmart backed corporate education reform agenda.

And that, of course, is what has the editors’s undies so tied up in a knot. They absolutely hate the teachers union, and by association, teachers. And so in their eyes, Santos’ support for “hiring thousands more teachers” is a transgression so unforgivable that they are willing to stake what’s left of their withered reputation on a challenger who I could outpoll with a half-hearted write-in campaign.

It is an oversized gesture of unabashed futility that demonstrates once and for all that when it comes to understanding or representing the values and interests of its citizens, Seattle has, alas, become a no-newspaper town.

Damn you, $15 an hour minimum wage!

Capitol Hill food+drink summer report: 27 bars, restaurants and cafes still to come 2014

If not for the city council’s job-killing, small-business-destroying socialism, it could’ve been 28!* Amirite?

* (But seriously, it sure does seem to be business as usual in Seattle despite the impending $15 minimum wage. Go figure.)

It’s no October Revolution, but kudos to socialist council member Kshama Sawant and her fellow traveler Nick Licata (literally a communist, in that he once lived in a commune) for fighting to make the city’s proposed Metro buyback funding package just a little less regressive.

Sawant and Licata propose replacing the 0.1 cent sales tax increase component of the package with an increase in the Commercial Parking Tax (from 12.5 percent to 17.5 percent), and a modest restoration of the Employee Hours Tax: $16.68 per employee per year, with small businesses exempted. That would cost a Seattle business only $1.39 per employee a month, about 8 cents an hour—hardly the type of burden that would drive jobs out of booming Seattle.

I won’t belabor the details here; Sawant has posted an informative FAQ on her council blog. Go read that. But I will take the opportunity to editorialize.

As I see it, there are two compelling reasons for the council to adopt the Sawant/Licata proposal: 1) It’s more fair; and 2) The resulting tax package would be more likely to pass voters.

On the first point, Washington already has the most regressive tax system in the nation, and by far. This tax swap doesn’t do a lot to reverse that, but at least it doesn’t add to it the way a highly regressive sales tax increase would. About 40 percent of downtown Seattle workers rely on Metro to commute in to work; all Sawant and Licata are doing is asking businesses to pick up a little bit of the cost of maintaining the bus service on which they rely.

On the second point, because the sales tax is so regressive, it is also highly unpopular, which surely contributed to the defeat of the countywide Prop 1 in April. If the Sawant/Licata amendment passes, the council would impose the Employee Hours and Commercial Parking taxes directly. Only the $60 car tab increase would go to Seattle voters in November. Considering how crucial maintaining bus service is to our local economy and the welfare of low and middle income commuters, the council should do whatever it can to best assure passage. Replacing the regressive sales tax component with more progressive alternatives will surely help.

The Sawant/Licata proposal will be debated at today’s Transportation Committee hearing, at 2 p.m., and possibly submitted to a final vote. If you can’t show your support in person, scroll to the bottom of Sawant’s FAQ and email council members. Also, sign this petition.

Were you one of thousands of Seattleites misled by Forward Seattle’s blatantly dishonest signature gatherers, tricked into thinking that their petition was in support of a $15 minimum wage rather than an effort to repeal it? Well if so, there’s still time to take your signature back!

Voters misled by Forward Seattle’s corrupt signature gathering tactics into signing a minimum wage repeal referendum they did not support can actually withdraw their signatures from the minimum wage petition. Signatures must be withdrawn in writing, and they have to be submitted before the close of business tomorrow (Thursday).

[…] Here’s the letter you can submit (PDF): http://bit.ly/withdrawsig

Again, it must be submitted in writing, and has to happen before the close of business.

In order to expedite the process, copies of the letter are available at SEIU 775 in downtown Seattle. If you stop by the SEIU 775 office in downtown Seattle — 215 Columbia St, Seattle, WA 98104 — you can sign the letter to withdraw your signature and we will make sure it gets to the appropriate place. If you want to withdraw your signature, please stop by no later than 3:00 pm THURSDAY (i.e. tomorrow) so we can ensure they get to the right place on time and your signature is successfully withdrawn.

By all accounts, Forward Seattle was just on the cusp of delivering enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. Don’t reward them for their dishonesty: withdraw your signature before it’s too late!

UPDATE: